Sausages have been traditionally made by filling the natural intestines of sheep, for example, with the sausage meat product whereupon the filled natural casing was formed into links for cooking by the consumer. In more modern times, sausages are predominantly made by introducing a meat emulsion into an artificial casing which encased the sausage material through linking and preliminary cooking whereupon the casings are peeled from the sausage before being sold to the consumer. Machines for making sausages with artificial casings have a high volume capability (up to 30,000 sausages per hour). Efforts have been made to use these high speed machines with natural casings. However, because of the nature of the natural casings including their relatively shorter length and non-uniform diameter, modern sausage encasing machines have not achieved the volume and capacity with natural casings as they do with artificial casings.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a method and machine for filling natural casings which is economical, relatively fast, and easy to accomplish as compared to previous ways of filling natural casings.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a method and a machine for filling natural casings wherein the meat pressure expands the natural casing and pushes the casing forward as the meat emulsion discharges from a conventional hollow stuffing horn.
A further object of this invention is to provide a machine and method for filling a natural casing wherein the filled casing passes through a hollow chuck with a resilient brake therein which impedes the movement of the casing from the stuffer tube and wherein the resilient brake creates a balance between the meat pushing forward on the casing and the brake holding back on the casing, all to create the desired fill or plumpness of the resulting sausage.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a flexible or resilient brake in a hollow chuck through which the filled casing moves in a rotatable twisting head which not only produces a longitudinal drag on the casing to resist forward motion thereof, but also provides a radial rotating course which helps to rotate the casing and thereupon facilitate twisting thereof as the filled sausage casing moves through the linking chains.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a follower or thrust collar on the stuffing tube upstream of the natural casing which is manually and intermittently pushed against the back side of the natural casing which provides a light force to prevent the natural casing from sticking to the tube but does not serve to move the natural casing from the tube, for this is accomplished by the momentum of the meat emulsion filling the casing. This force is insufficient to cause squeezing pressure between the follower and the twisting head.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a method and machine which will permit easy conversion of the machine from the natural casing operation to the artificial casing operation.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a casing clamp and casing hopper on a sausage making machine which can be moved away from the casing filling station at times to accommodate the natural casing mode for the machine.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a method and apparatus for filling a natural casing which has the ability to change the stuffing tube from a full stroke as with artificial casings to a partial stroke for use with natural casings.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a method and machine for filling natural casings which has a thrust collar that can be manually controlled by the operator, or an automatic follower which will duplicate the manual operation by providing a series of intermittent push and release actions to move the unshirred casing forward.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a method and machine to fill natural casings wherein water is present at various stages of the operation to keep the natural casing from becoming dehydrated and to maintain its very soft, pliable and slippery character.
A still further object of the invention is to provide a method and machine for filling natural casings which utilizes a cooling turban as a part of the rotating twister.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.